Removing Architectural Features Reduces Your Home's Value

It's remarkable to me that sometimes people will do something to their house that they thought would make it look good or seem more valuable, but as a matter of fact will reduce the value of a home.

When my wife and I were looking for a house to buy over a year ago, we made an offer on this house in Merced Heights:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/223-Vernon-St-94132/home/828698

Even though Merced Heights is basically considered being in the middle of nowhere in San Francisco, the main reasons I liked it was
a) it was cheap relative to most houses in San Francisco - listing price was under $500,000 - and
b) because it's on top of a hill, it has incredible views of the surrounding neighborhoods in San Francisco and of the Pacific Ocean. 

This was a house built in 1956, but definitely needed a lot of work done on it.  But given it seems like anything from the 1950s is all the rage now and becoming known as historic, this house had some interesting exterior architectural features of that era: thin angular decorative supports/slats, decorative wood window shutters, original windows. The theme of vertical lines is supposed to accentuate the geometry of the house. 

At the time, we lost the bid on the house (in fact to a all-cash bid that was tens of thousands of dollars lower than our bid), but my wife was really disappointed because she thought whoever bought the house might not appreciate the house's historic features and would probably rip everything up.  I thought this was a bit of a cynical thought, but turns out she was right...  Before and after:

They took out all the cute features that I just described, and now it's just another boring boxed house!  Unbelievable what these new owners did to reduce the value of their new home.

Knowing this, they probably messed up the other cool features inside the home.  Original fireplace:

Original bathroom wall tiling:

The house also had original 1950s metal kitchen cabinets, though not in great shape. 

Not Your Typical San Francisco 1950s House

Saw another interesting home show up on Redfin today, a home in Merced Manor from the 1950's:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/150-Gellert-Dr-94132/home/1822602?utm_source=myredfin

There's actually a pretty large cluster of San Francisco homes built in the 1950's, especially in the southern and southwestern part of the city (coinciding with when much of Daly City was developed); it's just there aren't as many large developments of such houses in most parts of the city since most of the city had already been developed by then.

This is kind of an interesting house. First of all, the exterior is built in the English Tudor style, which is a bit unusual as most of the 1950s houses built in San Francisco were built in a more mid-century modern esque style, similar to the Westlake district in Daly City. It's free-standing, unlike a lot of houses in San Francisco that are more row houses. It's got a relatively modern two car side-by-side garage, which is very unusual in San Francisco where most houses have tandem garages. Finally, it's a split level home, which is also a bit unusual for San Francisco (though not for the United States; split level homes started appearing in common usage in the 1930s and became truly prevalent from the 1950s to 1970s). This house was built in 1953, so pretty much at around the same time as the Stonestown Galleria (the developer of the Galleria was the Stoneson Brothers, who therefore possibly built this house as well).


Inside, it's got a beautiful lava rock fireplace and wood beam ceiling:


The next photo shows clearly how the split level works - the level in the "middle" contains the front entrance and the living and dining rooms. You go up the stairs halfway to get to the main bedrooms and bathrooms. You probably go down a few steps to get to the basement room(s) and garage.


Pretty hot looking green bathroom:


Another bathroom, typical 50's tiled bathroom:


Very cool and comfortable looking family room in the basement with built in benches:


Finally, here's looking at the two car garage: